Sex ed’s role in the struggle against sexual violence
How sex ed factors into the fight against sexual violence and adolescent suicide
Sexual education for students has become a political flashpoint in Ontario.
The Ford government’s decision to repeal the more progressive Wynne-era school curriculum has resulted in the omission of subjects such as gender identity, tech safety and consent.
It’s a move that has polarized Ontarians. As the province moves ahead with consultations on what kind of curriculum will be introduced, experts say the stakes go beyond preventing infections and diseases, to the root of a culture plagued by sexual violence.
In Canada, 20 per cent of women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetimes — a fact that hasn’t changed in at least 30 years. Statistics Canada says lesbians and bisexual women are at even higher risk of sexual violence. In some Indigenous communities in Ontario, as many as 90 per cent of women have reported being assaulted. In 2016, there were 93,000 Canadians who reported being victims of domestic violence; 79 per cent of them were women. Between 1997 and 2016, 1,800 people were killed by an intimate partner.
“High-profile sexual assault cases like the Ghomeshi case, along with the significant rates of sexual violence in our communities and on campuses, clearly suggest that more needs to be done, and more needs to be done at an earlier stage,” says Sandeep Prasad, the executive director of Action Canada For Sexual Health and Rights.
Experts say that getting children early education about notions such as consent is key to reducing the level of sexual violence in our society.
Control groups in research and youth anti-violence programs such as the U.S.-based Safe Dates have found that recurring conversations with kids about gender equality, power dynamics and consent help reduce rates of sexual violence.
Chris Farley Ratcliffe, executive director of Planned Parenthood Ottawa, says he’s concerned that waiting too long to have these kinds of talks with young people will have serious adverse effects.
“The behavioural change that’s required for people to get an indepth understanding of consent and of healthy relationships is not a one-and-done workshop. It needs to be repeated interventions,” says Farley Ratcliffe. “By eliminating consent conversations and starting to build that understanding in the elementary years, we’re losing a lot of behavioural-change time.”
SETTING NEW STANDARDS FOR SEX ED
Across Canada, the story of sex education has historically been one of anatomy and preventing negative consequences such as sexually-transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancy, Prasad says.
Some estimates date the origins of sex ed in Ontario to the late 1800s. At the time, it was considered a tool to slow the spread of venereal disease.
The sexual liberation movement of the 1960s — and later the AIDS
crisis of the 1980s — helped shape conventional sex ed to include information about unwanted pregnancies and social issues related to teen sex.
The skills portion of schoolbased sex education — for instance, sexual decision-making, how to give and ask for consent, and how to openly communicate on preferences and desires — is often left off the table, Prasad says.
“What we have to bear in mind as the fundamental goal of sexuality education in schools is really twofold, on a very basic level: It’s respect for oneself and respect for others,” he says.
Prasad, Farley Ratcliffe and others contacted for this series said more developed conversations in and outside of health class are required to help kids understand — and critique — constructs around gender and sexuality, as well as the contexts in which sex, or abuse, could happen.
Elementary and high schools are the perfect venues for conversations such as these, Prasad says. Sometimes school is the only place a young person can talk openly about sexuality, gender, pleasure, consent and healthy relationships. Failing to teach kids about the connections between sex and human emotion and behaviour does a disservice to them, and to their current and future peers and partners, Prasad says.
The Ford government’s repeal, Prasad says, “will foster less empathy for the experiences of queer and trans kids and adolescents, and for women, and for those who have experienced abuse and sexual assault.”
While women represent the majority of sexual-assault victims, queer and trans people are at disproportionately higher risk for violence. They are also at a higher risk of suicide; in fact, the suicide rate for queer kids is four times higher than it is for kids who don’t identify as queer.
Giving kids a broader, more inclusive sense of what’s “normal” can help at-risk kids prosper at school, according to a report by GLSEN, a U.S.-based education program focused on making schools safer for LGBT youth.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF INACTION
Educators in Quebec point to some of the implications of changing sex-ed policies.
In the 13 years between when Quebec killed off mandatory sex ed and when it brought it back in 2018, the province experienced a dramatic spike in the number of sexually-transmitted infections — most notably for people aged 15 to 24. Teachers during this time could teach sex ed if they wanted to, but they weren’t obligated.
“Doing sex ed in the field, we have a lot more questions — a lot of obvious (things) people who are 14, 15 should know, like how pregnancy works,” says Charlie Morin, the co-ordinator of the Sense Project, a sex-ed program at Montreal community organization Head and Hands. The organization filled in some of the demand gaps when the province made sex ed optional.
Although the province has reinstated sex ed throughout elementary and high school, Morin says it only addresses the bare minimum of what could have been included in the curriculum, and that it lacks basic assurances.
“What worries me is that there’s no accountability ... There’s no consequences for teachers if they don’t do it,” says Morin.
He notes that the pushback against sex ed has not been as vocal in Quebec as it has been in Ontario. Given that, he says, Quebec missed an opportunity to make the curriculum truly progressive and a model for the world.
“It’s very hetero-centric,” Morin says. “It’s just like, ‘Be good to the gays!’ But it doesn’t actually talk about gay sex.”
The topic of sex education has been thoroughly researched for decades. Countless studies from around the world confirm sex ed helps prevent pregnancy and reduces STI rates — and that inclusive, comprehensive curricula make sex safer for more people.
WHAT LIES AHEAD
The debate over sex ed in Ontario is far from over. A large teachers’ union is planning to sue the government over the 2015 curriculum repeal and the creation of a “snitch line” set up to report teachers who aren’t complying with the rules.
Since the Ford repeal, Mississauga teacher Catherine Colgan says her Facebook groups have been ablaze with her colleagues’ contempt and incredulity. “Especially as Catholics, we can’t condone keeping kids in the dark,” she says. “I don’t know anyone who is not angry about this, who is not planning to resist in some way, and in ways that are undetectable.”
Andrew Campbell, a Grade 5 teacher in Brantford who has been teaching for more than 25 years, suggests that anti-repeal activism might spur more frequent in-class discussions about the very issues the 1998 curriculum fails to address.
“It will push things into social studies and language arts and media studies,” Campbell says. “Kids will still be learning about them, but in more integrated ways ... which is way more effective anyway.”
Campbell says it will be a challenge to speak to all families’ values and viewpoints in the classroom, but that the basic tenets of the Ontario Human Rights Code — that is, no discrimination against individuals based on gender, sexual orientation, race and other factors — will be upheld no matter the outcome.